A few years ago Mike Dickison went back to university and did a PhD on giant flightless birds. A couple of months ago he was employed by the Whanganui Regional Museum to curate its huge, and largely unknown, moa bone collection. The bones, which were extracted from a swamp just a few minutes' drive from Whanganui in the 1930s and 1960s, have been kept in boxes in the museum's basement ever since. Dr Mike Dickison hopes to have the bones on public display by the end of the year.